You can say what you like about programmatic advertising - but I'm not sure You Tube is making the most of its space. Thanks to my little boy (aged 3), a large percentage of the content I watch on You Tube consists of cartoons. We watch them together, with him sitting on my lap. Even the most junior media planner would have identified this as an ideal moment to target us - and more importantly, all the fathers and sons like us - with ads for toys, candies and fizzy drinks.
But no. You Tube has served us ads for holidays in Portugal, Garnier BB Cream, Roche Bobois, "OK Google" and an extremely violent video game (which helpfully warned us that it was certified 18). What that was doing before an episode of Peppa Pig I'll never know. All of which is a missed opportunity, because when the ads hit their mark, they are horribly effective. I had to sit through the trailer for the new Paddington movie about 150 times. Then it was back to a Scholl foot-smoothing tool. You Tube can't decide whether I'm a geek or a 35-year-old woman. Even Gustave said: "Papa - skip!" But most parents are wary of pester power, so perhaps I shouldn't complain. The other day, unusually, an ad for Kinder popped up. Gustave fidgeted and said in a sort of purr: "Kindeerrr." It took me a while to convince him that the shops were shut. So maybe beauty creams are preferable to chocolate eggs.
